


The Queen's Coat

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: This is from an in-progress AU where there was no Battle of the Five Armies - Bilbo manages to get the Arkenstone out of the Mountain without rousing Smaug and he immediately gives it to Thorin.After all this time, Thorin thinks he might have been attempting to emulate the wrong monarch.





	The Queen's Coat

**Author's Note:**

> This is from an in-progress AU where the Smaug is defeated by the combined forces of the Company and a few golems - you didn't think those stone dwarves carved into the Mountainside were just there for decoration, did you?

The sealing of the Mountain left many things in an eerie state of preservation. Bread, hard as a rock, half-carved on a plate with a knife sticking out. Tankards upended on the floor of the Great Hall, dropped and abandoned in haste. Clothes in wardrobes, smelling of dark, shut-away places, but clean. Waiting to be worn, as though their owners had stepped out and would be back any time.

The exterior of the royal apartments had been torn asunder, the platinum ornamentation in the white marble walls and doorways ripped from their fastenings by the dragon’s claws. Here and there Thorin spied places where the grooves were etched in so thickly that he could place his hand in the crevice to the wrist. He withdrew his hand with a shudder; the beast lay still and defeated in the shadow of Erebor and he his heart beat fast, as if in the heat of battle, when he thought what further destruction it might have wrought had it not been for the swift and nimble fingers of their burglar. 

Ravens had been dispatched to the four corners of the world, to the Seven Kingdoms, bearing the news of the restoration of Durin's Folk to the Lonely Mountain. Already they had Dáin's reply - joyful congratulations and notice that they should expect the first caravans from the East to arrive in a few days. 

**The Hand of the Maker must have been with you throughout, cousin,** he wrote, the letters falling all over themselves in his haste, like the stream off a waterfall. **I am pleased more than ink and paper can express that your quest was successful - I'll say more when I see you, and probably more than that when I toast your victory.**

The letter was tucked in Thorin's pocket. He'd read it once and once was enough. He could not fault Dáin for honesty; not once did he brag that he expected the venture to be a success. Tactful, that was Dáin through and through. Thorin didn't doubt he was mightily pleased - and also mightily surprised. It was hard not to feel the bitterness of gall rise in his throat and heat suffuse his cheeks when he thought too much on it.

 _Aye,_ a cruel and vindictive part of himself grumbled. _The Hand of the Maker did guide us - His was all the assistance we had for you'd not give over a single battalion when I sought your aide. Luck was all you gave us and that's nothing solid to gird mail on._

It was pointless, really, to feel resentful still when they'd snatched a miraculous victory from the ravening jaws of a dragon. But he still felt it, like a cold flame in his breast. He had a week to snuff it that he might receive his noble cousin with all due cordiality. 

Hence this journey to the apartments - Balin's orders, for if Thorin was to be King Under the Mountain, he thought he ought to look the part. The Raven Crown was one of the first treasures unearthed from their sifting through the mess (and it was a _mess_ , despite the beauty and value of it) in the throne room, but that was all they'd recovered. Thorin thought their energies were best spend rebuilding the Gate, for it would do them little good to regain the Mountain, only to lose her again because of mistaken priorities. The gold would keep itself. 

The crown was left atop Thorin's sleeping pallet at the entrance to the Mountain. He held only a lantern with him as he made his way through pitch-black corridors that, despite all his years away, he could find his way through confidently with his eyes shut. Thorin shoved, with all his might, to get the cracked and crooked door to budge enough to let him into his grandparents' apartment. The room had the same shut-up, musty smell as the rest of the city and the lamp gleamed over the furniture, tapestries, and lamps which had long ago burned away to nothing. 

_Come along,_ Thorin told himself, shutting his eyes and taking a breath against the memories that threatened to overwhelm him. _You've a task to complete. Do it. Move along._

There was a wardrobe kept beside the door, always locked for it contained the court robes of the King and Queen. No jewels; the dragon left it well alone, the finely woven threads of gold and silver too meagre for Smaug the Terrible. He opened it and, as in so many apartments, their clothes - the vestments of the King and Queen, the clothes of his Udad and Umad - hung, waiting to be shrugged on. Waiting for a hundred years. By the Maker, how they'd _waited_. For home. For kingdom. For crown. 

_The people will want their King,_ Balin said, so simple, but there was so much beneath the words he spoke. The people will need a king, not a smithy, not a woodsman, not a hunter. Be a King, now. 

Thorin wasn't entirely confident that he knew how to be this kind of king, but he couldn't deny that court robes might help. 

At first the thought his grandfather's robes, red as blood or rubies, the robes that marked him as leader of the Guard, Erebor's army abroad would be most suitable for a King, under whose power the ancient rites and skill of his own people had felled the fire-drake. But, he knew just by looking at them, that they would not suit him. His grandfather had been a strong dwarf, to be sure, but not so tall as Thorin. It wouldn't look very regal, he feared, to present himself to Erebor's refugees, representatives of the Seven Kingdoms, or even that oily Man from Lake-town in robes that hung a good three inches off the floor. 

That left the blue coat, edged in gold, with a black bearskin collar hanging to the right of the red. The Queen's court robes, a grand, lavishly embroidered garment with fur from a bear she'd killed herself ornamenting the collar, hem, and sleeves. It made an already grand and intimidating dwarf appear that much moreso, but the fine detailed work added a bit of majesty.

The coat had been commissioned by his grandmother directly, shaped to be worn over a full suit of armor or, as most often suited her, a leather jerkin, hiding away her quiver and bow beneath its pleats so that, when her duty to her people was done, the Queen could fling it off at once, and go charging out into the forest on her best horse. She rode swift and sure, disappearing sometimes for days, but no one gave her movements a second thought. She was made of stone, yet could weather all manner of tricks that the world aboveground could throw at her. She could swim the fastest river, climb the highest peak, and grapple with any beast, from a skittish rabbit, to a mighty drake and always _always_ come out the victor.

Only once had Thorin known her to have lost and it was her final fight, burned to ash in an instant. But Thorin knew, in his heart, that with the felling of Smaug the Queen had been avenged. It only stood to avenge the King - the Pale Orc was out there in the world, somewhere. And if he marched upon Erebor, Thorin hoped that his people would acquit themselves as well in future as they had when the fire-drake's corpse fell heavy upon the earth. 

There had been songs of praise written for her before she'd rounded her first century. The finest hunter that ever walked beneath the earth. The fiercest warrior, who's greatest trophy, the head of the cold-drake that killed her King remained still in the game room. Thorin had heard them all when he was a child, slack-jawed and round-eyed at the thought that _such_ a one still walked the earth. That her blood ran in his veins. That she could eat and laugh, and curse, and work, just as any other dwarf. But he'd not heard such songs from her own lips; his grandmother never sang her own victories. She was keen-eyed, sharp-sighted unto her old age. One did not get eyes such as that from looking back, only gazing, steady on at what was right before them.

She did not boast of past accomplishments. Nor dwell on all she'd not yet done. Sigdís had eyes only on the present, as a hunter only had its eyes upon its prey. She'd no patience for court, for diplomacy, for bowing and scraping and endless talk. She craved action, not words. Words were tricky, she always said. And that which was spoken was less reliable than that which was carved, and that which was carved less reliable still to that which was _done._

 _You can prate and prate_ , she told him once, _but 'til I see blood on your sword, or bruises on your chest, or ink upon your skin, I've no cause to believe a word of it._

There were notches taken out of her face, puckered wounds upon her arms and legs, and it must have taken pints of ink to etch all her accomplishments into her flesh. The songs lasted only as long as it took for the last note to fade from the air. Legacy was a word painfully close to 'myth.' To see her was to know her. The boom of her voice, the rough caress of her hands, the strength of her arms.

Udad loved words. He'd strike up a conversation with anyone, eyes merrily twinkling as he charmed and cajoled his way into the good opinion of anyone he met, Dwarf, Man, or Elf. Umad was all stony silence and keen eyes in court, her presence enough. The skin of the bear she had slain worn proudly over her shoulders as a reminder that she was every bit as skilled and fierce as she looked. She didn't command fear, not exactly. Respect. 

If she could do it, stand before an audience of foreign dignitaries, that half-wild creature of earth and woodlands, sunshine and rain, surely he could manage to play the role of King as ably as she'd borne the mantle of Queen Consort. He, that rough-hewn creature of roads and grief and struggle. He could at least try.

There was something to be said for legacy, he thought as he pulled the coat from where it hung and shrugged it over his shoulders. There was a use for heroes in such a world as this. Inspiration to spur one on through an impossible task. 

The heavy folds of the coat fell to the floor and enveloped him like an embrace; it fit perfectly.


End file.
